Shattered Bone

by Chris Stewart

  As Ammon looked out ahead for the tanker, he heard Morozov talk to the tanker once again.

  “Wolf five-three, Heater four-one.”

  “Go ahead, Heater.”

  “Yeah, ahh ... we are receiving some static on this frequency. Might be some bleed over from one of the carrier groups off of Lisbon. Any chance we could change over to another frequency? How about two-forty-seven point nine five?”

  “Sure, no problem, Wolf. We are switching over now.”

  The radio had seemed very clear to Ammon. He hadn’t noticed any static at all.

  TORREJON AIR BASE, SPAIN

  Twelve hundred miles to the east, at the Torrejon Air Base, the command post was going crazy. On the far wall, illuminated red lights strobed the semi-darkness, and a buzzer sounded gently overhead. Telephones were ringing from all over the world. Printers clacked and spit out long rolls of white paper. The senior controller and communications officer were eyeing each other across the padded floor.

  “What do you mean, you can’t get them up on the radios?” the communications officer shouted.

  “The storms have created some interference on the High Frequency,” the senior controller responded. “We’ve been trying for the past two hours, almost since the tanker took off, but we haven’t been able to raise them.”

  “Sonofa ... ,” the communications officer muttered. He thumped on the table and stared up at the map, thinking, then turning to his controller, he said, “Okay, forget the HF. Try getting ahold of Atlantic Radio. They track all of the transatlantic aircraft. They should be able to get through to the tanker.

  “I want you to do whatever it takes. Call them on the land-line. Use the satellite communications if you have to. But get through to Global Atlantic and tell them to turn that tanker around!”

  The controller nodded and turned back to his console. Picking up one of the phones that hung near his rolling chair, he too began to yell at whoever was on the other end.

  The communications officer shook his head, turned back to his desk, and read the message once again. It was very short and to the point.

  ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

  TO: Butter 46

  FR: Chief of Staff, USAF

  RE: “SHATTERED BONE”

  Message follows.

  ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

  1- Reason to believe your Tanker Task Force has been unlawfully tasked to refuel Atlantic crossing B-1.

  2- DO NOT ... repeat ... DO NOT allow your tanker to refuel B-1. Abort refueling by any means.

  3- Acknowledge receipt of message with follow-on actions.

  4- Message complete

  ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

  The communications officer leaned back in his seat and sucked on his tongue. “SHATTERED BONE”? Code Alpha messages from the Air Force Chief of Staff? Unlawfully tasked tanker orders? What was going on?

  REAPER’S SHADOW

  Six minutes later, Ammon found the tanker’s lower rotating beacon as the enormous aircraft made its final turn back toward the Bone. Two minutes after that, the tanker rolled out directly ahead of the B-1, one thousand feet above it. Richard Ammon quickly punched off his auto pilot and began a swift climb up to the tanker. As he climbed, he watched his fuel readout click down through 2,500 pounds. A bright yellow light continually flickered in his face, warning him of his critical fuel state. It had been on for the past sixty minutes. He was able to ignore the light now.

  He began to concentrate on the tanker that lay up ahead. He was closing very quickly. It would only be a matter of minutes before he would be taking on fuel.

  “Tanker is at twelve o’clock, four thousand feet,” Morozov announced from the back cockpit. He was monitoring Ammon’s approach to the tanker on his radar.

  “Rag,” Ammon replied, keeping the tanker in sight. He was just beginning to see the outline of its huge wings as they were illuminated by the underbelly floodlights. He glanced at his airspeed indicator as he continued closing. He had almost fifty knots of closure speed on the tanker. That was way too fast. But he didn’t pull back on his throttles. He didn’t have time to slow down and make a nice, smooth approach to the tanker. Instead, he stole another quick glance at his fuel gauge. One thousand nine hundred pounds.

  Tight. It was going to be tight.

  Ammon was still five hundred feet from the tanker when his number four engine flamed out.

  THULE, GREENLAND

  “Wolf five-three, this is Global on eleven-forty-six HF. How do you read?” the Global Air Traffic controller transmitted for the fifth time. Again no response. The controller, sitting in a warm office in Thule, Greenland, turned to his supervisor and shrugged his shoulders. The supervisor then spoke into a phone.

  “No contact. Yes, yes, of course we’ll keep trying. But it doesn’t sound like they’re there. Now that could be because of two things. They could have turned their radios off. Or switched over to another frequency. Either way, if they aren’t listening to us, there isn’t much we can do.”

  REAPER’S SHADOW

  Caution lights flashed all over the cockpit when Ammon lost his number four engine. He quickly extinguished them by hitting the master caution light reset button on his forward instrument display. He could live without the engine for now. What he needed was to get up to the tanker and get some gas.

  The KC-10 loomed up before him, filling the front of his wind-screen as he moved in closer. He could now see the air-refueling boom as it hung down from the KC-10’s tail. Tiny blue lights illuminated the tip of the boom, swinging around in a small circle as the boom drifted and floated in the stream of rushing air.

  Ammon tried to ignore the stirring boom and instead concentrated on the body of the aircraft as he moved aggressively into position. When the Bone was within eighty feet of the tanker, Ammon quickly drew his throttles back to idle. The bomber slid into position, twelve feet aft of the boom. As Ammon concentrated on maintaining this position, the boom operator extended the boom and slid it along the nose of the bomber. At first, the boomer missed the air refueling port, and he pulled the boom quickly away from the bomber to keep from smashing out one of the windows. Ammon sucked in his breath and then held it. His number two engine sputtered and also flamed out. Another half dozen caution lights flickered on. Morozov swore at him from the back cockpit. Ammon stayed in the contact position, waiting for the boomer to hook up to his Bone. Slowly, with exercised caution, the Boomer moved the boom back toward the tip on the B-l’s nose. The boom slid across the thick metal as it searched for the receptacle block. Then, with a solid clunk, the receiver latched and accepted the nozzle.

  Ammon glanced down at his fuel gauge. Twelve hundred pounds. He held his breath and bit on his tongue as he counted the systems he had lost when the second engine had flamed out. Two generators, two main hydraulic pumps, half a dozen avionics computers. The list went on and on.

  But it didn’t matter. The B-1 could fly with only two engines. It was dangerous, but not deadly. What he needed was fuel. He continually cross-checked the fuel gauge. Then he saw the numbers begin to increase. The bomber was taking on gas.

  Four huge transfer pumps inside the tanker began to pump fuel out of their tanks and through the six-inch boom at a rate of over 10,000 pounds every minute. Ammon cross-checked the fuel gauge once again. It was passing through 3,000 pounds and increasing very quickly. He let out his breath with a sigh of relief, reached down and restarted his engines, then settled back in his seat and concentrated on staying in the proper position behind the huge tanker.

  TORREJON AIR BASE, SPAIN

  “Sir, I’ve located a carrier task force off the coast of Portugal, about three hundred miles west of Lisbon,” the Torrejon controller said. “They may be within UHF radio range of the Wolf tanker. I’m getting a satellite link with them now.” The controller was standing by the communications officer’s desk. The CommOff looked up and rubbed his hands through h
is sandy brown hair, then glanced at his watch. 21:14. The refueling, if it was on schedule, was just about ready to begin.

  “Do it,” he commanded. “Tell the carrier communications center to blanket the sky with the message. The tanker should be monitoring guard frequency. Every aircraft has to do that. Tell them that would be a good place to start.”

  “Sir, it’s already done.”

  REAPER’S SHADOW

  Ammon looked at his fuel gauge. They had already taken on almost 130,000 pounds of fuel. It was good to be fat once again.

  Suddenly, with another clunk, the refueling boom disconnected from his bomber with a mist of spraying jet fuel. The boom operator raised the boom and retracted its nozzle. Ammon heard his radio come alive.

  “Heater four-one, that completes your off-load. You have received one-hundred-thirty thousand pounds of JP-8.”

  “Roger, Wolf,” Richard Ammon replied as he pulled back on his throttles and began to descend away from the KC-10. The outline of the tanker began to fade and merge with the darkness as the Bone descended toward the ocean.

  Ammon pushed the nose of the aircraft downward, establishing a 25 degree nose low attitude. They descended toward the ocean at over 20,000 feet per minute, cutting through the darkness toward the glistening ocean waves. He only had a few minutes to get down low. They would soon be close enough to the coast of Spain that, at any altitude above a few thousand feet, they would be detected by NATO’s over-the-horizon radar.

  Ammon didn’t need to remind himself that the Americans knew he was coming. And they had fighters based all over Europe, as well as carriers in the Mediterranean Sea.

  As he pushed the aircraft down toward the sea, Morozov spoke up from the rear cockpit.

  “Looks like we got a little weather up ahead,” he announced. “My radar is showing a huge squall line. I’ve got all sorts of radar returns. Looks like there are huge thunderstorms all across the Mediterranean Sea.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ___________________

  __________________

  U.S.S. AMERICA

  THE AMERICA HEAVED IN THE FIFTEEN-FOOT SEAS, THE DARKENED FLIGHT deck pitching into the night sky as the carrier crashed through the waves. The carrier’s superstructure was shrouded in a thick fog of mist and saltwater spray. A freezing rain mixed with the crashing waves and soaked the carrier’s grated steel deck with a sheet of diluted salt water. Strobes of lightning flashed through the sky while thunder crackled and rolled overhead.

  The Mediterranean weather had turned sour, a result of a low pressure system that had been slow in making its way across the plains of central Europe. The system built up heat and energy as it crossed the sun-baked land, then became unstable as it mixed with the moisture laden troposphere that hung over the Mediterranean Sea. The result was an enormous line of storms that now stretched from southern Italy to the western coast of Turkey, rolling the entire Mediterranean with high winds and bitter cold rain. Brutal lightning continually flashed from the bowels of the mushroom-shaped clouds, arcing its way to the sea.

  On the best of nights, the flight deck of a carrier was a horribly dangerous place to be. On nights like this, it was worse. All of nature’s elements—the wind and the sea, the rain and the thunder—combined with man’s howling catapults and screaming jet engines to form a Niagara of noise, lights, vibration, and confusion.

  Three hundred men worked in the darkness to launch and recover the carrier’s aircraft. Many of them were nearing exhaustion. Yet the night was young. It was only 22:15 local and the America was only halfway through it’s second night launch. Aircraft were already waiting to be recovered. Hornets and Tomcats circled overhead, occasionally tapping into refuelers for gas as they waited for clearance to land. As soon as the second round of aircraft had been catapulted out over the water, the waiting aircraft would line up to make their approach to the carrier’s deck.

  An F-18 Hornet taxied up to the catapult and was quickly surrounded by sailors wearing different colored vests. One man communicated with the pilot through an elaborate dance of gestures and flashing hand signals, while two other sailors connected the fighter’s nose wheel to the catapult bar. The pilot signaled his gross weight to the catapult controller, who set the catapult’s steam engines at an appropriate setting that would blow the thirty-six-thousand-pound fighter across the deck. The pilot completed his final checks, ran his two engines up to full afterburner and pushed himself back in his seat. The catapult hissed, pulling her steel cables taut against the carrier deck. The cat director bent his knees and slowly lowered his hands to the grated deck. When his fingers touched the water-soaked metal, the catapult fired. Two seconds later, the fighter was airborne. It immediately turned away from the carrier as it climbed up through the rain.

  By the time the pilot had passed through three thousand feet, he already had tuned up his radar and was sweeping the sky up ahead. He quickly took his appointed place in the armada of U.S. and NATO aircraft that were searching for the stolen bomber over the dark skies of the Med.

  REAPER’S SHADOW

  The B-1 continued through the night. She was more than halfway across the Med on her way to the Aegean Sea, the ancient vineyards of Sicily having passed just off to her left. She sped along two hundred feet above the dark ocean waves. Richard Ammon peered out through the darkness, squinting his eyes to protect his night vision from the flashing lightning that constantly filled the sky. The pointed nose of his bomber had picked up a faint and eerie green glow. The entire cockpit constantly crackled with sparkling flashes of faint blue light. Tiny fluorescent spider webs of electricity crawled up his windscreen, like a thousand outstretched fingers. Saint Elmo’s Fire. It was beautiful and fascinating to watch, but very dangerous, for it indicated the presence of massive amounts of electricity. Of course, the possibility of a lightning strike was only one of the risks that a pilot took when he chose to fly directly through such powerful storms.

  The turbulence alone was enough to rip the wings off of most aircraft. But the Bone bobbed along, slicing through the wind sheer and downdrafts with considerable ease. Two small winglets underneath her nose flickered in the wind, acting to stabilize the aircraft as it flew through the stormy night. The massive engines never even coughed, though with every passing minute they sucked in tons of rain-soaked air. Her radar continued to peer through weather, beaming through the turbulent wind and the rain to guide the aircraft over the white-capped waves.

  This was perfect, Ammon thought. He couldn’t have asked for anything better. The storm would almost assuredly hide the B-1 from any American fighter’s radar. And even if they were to find him, it would take a very brave pilot to try and chase him through such a storm.

  Ammon knew that he would be safe until he passed to the east of the storms. By then he would be over the Black Sea, and only a few minutes ride from the Ukrainian border. There the chase would end, for even if the Americans were able to find him, it would no longer matter, for the small fighters didn’t have the range to pursue him past the Aegean Sea.

  Richard Ammon scanned his instruments once again as the aircraft bounced along. Everything was functioning perfectly. The terrain-following system was flying the aircraft. There was really nothing for him to do.

  He reached down and picked up his chart. He studied the black pencil line that depicted their desired flight path. It was a hook-shaped line that passed south of Sicily before turning northeast toward Greece and the Aegean Sea. Morozov had planned their intended flight path to avoid passing over any NATO airspace.

  Ammon continued to study the map. He traced his finger along the line, following its crooked path until it passed just north of the island of Crete. There he let his finger linger. He glanced up into the darkness. The island nation was not far ahead.

  Returning his eyes to the cockpit, Ammon stared at his weapons display and considered once again the horrible weapons that were stored inside the belly of his aircraft. For the thousandth time, he swallowed and shook his h
ead in awe. He couldn’t help himself. The magnitude of destructive power was enough to baffle the mind.

  In his mind, he counted the weapons. Ten M-95 high-velocity bunker-killing missiles. The specialty weapon. Designed to kill military and civilian leadership as they cowered in their subterranean bunkers. Eight B-69 nuclear gravity bombs. General purpose destruction. Twenty-four megatons of fiery blast and smoking debris. Guaranteed to radiate for a hundred years, producing massive stretches of hot soil, glowing milk, mutant fish, and enough thyroid and bone cancers to fill every hospital bed within the whole of northern Russia.

  Then there was the last weapon stuffed inside his bomb bay. The guided cruise missile. “The Sunbeam,” Colonel Fullbright had called it. It was a weapon Ammon knew very little about. He didn’t understand how it worked. He didn’t know how it was guided. He didn’t know its capabilities, lethality, payload, or speed.

  All he knew was its range. About three hundred miles. Because that was how close he had to get to his target before he could spit the missile out of the belly of the Bone and send it on its low-altitude flight toward Moscow.

  Which meant he had to fly at least eighty miles on the other side of the Russian border. Eighty miles north of their lines of defense.

  Ammon drew in a weary breath, then turned his attention back to his chart. He followed the pencil line across the Black Sea to where it crossed the Ukrainian border. He followed it north, past the city of Kiev toward the Russian front.

  There he expected to encounter the first of the Russian fighters. The whole of Russia’s Southern Command—SU-27s and 29s, Mig 35s and 31s. They were all there, jammed along the Ukrainian border. Each of the fighters would carry a full combat load. About half of the aircraft would be dedicated to defensive-counter air, set up in a wide swath as a combat air patrol, watching and waiting for an attack such as this, prepared at a moment’s notice to track any incoming Bandits and blow them out of the sky.